Did you work at Longbridge? Rover stories. Red Robbo things.

[Matty]

30 minutes ago, motorpunk said:

ISBN assigned - 9798311342803

Now get on with it. I've reread the looking for the real weasel about 5 times now. I'm currently having to read a book my mum lent me 🤣

[R Lutz]

20 hours ago, lesapandre said:

 and strike action bit.

Thats the crucial thing. No matter how shit your product, or how good, if it's not actually available, you'll never sell it. Strikes killed them, not quality.

[motorpunk]

8 minutes ago, R Lutz said:

Strikes killed them, not quality.

Without derailing the thread, there was actually over production at times, greater supply than demand, but there’s no doubt that strikes didn’t help.

[chaseracer]

I hadn't realised that 60-75% of Mini production was exported.

[R Lutz]

I interviewed Alex Moulton once at his Great Hall. He laid the blame squarely at the communists. Did you know he drank Stella from a can?

[artdjones]

9 hours ago, Matty said:

I'm currently having to read a book my mum lent me 🤣

[richardmorris]

12 minutes ago, R Lutz said:

I interviewed Alex Moulton once at his Great Hall. He laid the blame squarely at the communists. Did you know he drank Stella from a can?

Bicycle moulton? What was he like?

[lesapandre]

I've met him too - a long time ago.

My recollection:

Very posh (in a nice way), very boffinish (reminded me a bit of Patrick Moore), very scientific and keen to explain science - we talked about the Mini - he had at least a couple at his house - one an auto with some sort of experimental suspension. By that time the BMC connection was long gone and he was concentrating on his own-design bikes and other inventions. Tried to sell me a bike after our meeting.

Seemed a throughly nice chap.

Lived to be 92.

[lesapandre]

1 hour ago, chaseracer said:

I hadn't realised that 60-75% of Mini production was exported.

Very popular in France for a time.

I think the overall figures include the Belgian products too.

[artdjones]

1 hour ago, lesapandre said:

I've met him too - a long time ago.

My recollection:

Very posh (in a nice way), very boffinish (reminded me a bit of Patrick Moore), very scientific and keen to explain science - we talked about the Mini - he had at least a couple at his house. By that time the BMC connection was long gone and he was concentrating on his bikes and other inventions. Tried to sell me a bike after our meeting.

Seemed a throughly nice chap.

Lived to be 92.

He was behind the Moulton coach.

[High Jetter]

3 hours ago, R Lutz said:

Did you know he drank Stella from a can?

Top man, I do that myself. His bikes seemed to do well.

[Dobloseven]

10 hours ago, artdjones said:

He was behind the Moulton coach.

That's straight out of Thunderbirds!

[sierraman]

16 hours ago, R Lutz said:

I interviewed Alex Moulton once at his Great Hall. He laid the blame squarely at the communists. Did you know he drank Stella from a can?

Great thinkers like myself and Alex Moulton often do. 

[grogee]

On 18/02/2025 at 23:59, lesapandre said:

I'd heard that - I don't know how it was calculated.

The BMC board reputedly had the bad habit of pricing their cars against the competition rather than looking at what they actually cost + profit. 

They really were all over the place. 

I'm not sure what Ford meant - because you can't work out the total cost of a car just by looking at the manufactured components - there are the variable on-costs like  plant, buildings and wages  as well as advertising etc - all which contribute to the cost. Maybe Ford estimated these.

BMC had too many plants, strung out supply chains and paid out too much in dividends in the 1960's which all weighted on the gross cost of each car too.

Issigonis was a brilliant designer - but I'm unsure how much thought went into making the Mini easy (cheap) to make or in streamlining the production process to reduce costs. Probably very little.

I don't think they set fixed parameters for vehicle cost and specification either - unlike Ford. 

By the time of the Mk1 Cortina Ford were making much more use of computers in body design too - to reduce materials used and thus costs.

The Cortina is for example considerably lighter than the equivalent Farina A60.

You would think this sort of gross miscalculation is a thing of the past, but JLR has a history of fanciful internal accounting. 

The Special Vehicles dept was once a sleepy corner of Gaydon where they made a few bulletproof Range Rovers every now and then. 

Through the miracle of creative accounting, they became the most profitable division in the company (because their profits did not account for the turmoil their low-volume products caused elsewhere in the business). 

This culminated in the cancellation of the three-door Range Rover L405, which was ready to go - handbook written, tooling paid for, the lot. Weeks from start of production. 

AFAIK no heads rolled for that but my god that is an expensive fuck up. JLR has got form too, other programmes were cancelled late in the day eg C-X75. Chief engineer and boy's club chairman Bob Joyce proudly told employees that we'd be making it, only to axe it a few months later. Again, workshop info written, tooling bought, suppliers primed. Twats. 

[Alusilber]

Although not within the Red Robbo timeframe, the book "Living in a Plant" by David Caffrey is an entertaining memoir of someone who worked at Longbridge in the 90s. I can imagine some of the habits and attitudes he encountered were pretty much unchanged since the 70s...

https://amzn.eu/d/7HFWG7c

[motorpunk]

Thanks @Alusilber - I was at Longbridge myself in the ‘90s, although, with hindsight, not as often as I could have been. I miss the smell of the place. Old car factories and tier one supplier plants all have the same smell; cutting fluid, oil, hot plastic and BO. I miss it.

[motorpunk]

Call out of the blue from a brilliant old boy today, more stories shared of his life, first hand, knowing Robbo. I will get round to writing as soon as the stories stop coming…

[Alusilber]

On 21/02/2025 at 15:09, motorpunk said:

Thanks @Alusilber - I was at Longbridge myself in the ‘90s, although, with hindsight, not as often as I could have been. I miss the smell of the place. Old car factories and tier one supplier plants all have the same smell; cutting fluid, oil, hot plastic and BO. I miss it.

Yes, of course, having read both, Mr Caffrey's book is indeed in a similar vein to your own "Confessions...".

[motorpunk]

Am really pleased with the research, I’ve uncovered a load of great material, and am just missing contact with his daughter. I hope she’s still with us, a few leads I had went cold. 
 

Am I the only person who takes time off work to go and visit Stourbridge?! 

[N Dentressangle]

15 minutes ago, motorpunk said:

Am I the only person who takes time off work to go and visit Stourbridge?! 

https://www.stourbridge.com/

Very possibly

[motorpunk]

How’s your weekend? Mine has been spent trying to be taken seriously by the Communist Party. 

[Floatylight]

25 minutes ago, motorpunk said:

How’s your weekend? Mine has been spent trying to be taken seriously by the Communist Party. 

Do you want an introduction?

[motorpunk]

Am now being taken seriously by the communist party. Thanks, ‘shiters.

Have some once-confidential analysis from Ford on BL’s market position in the 1970s as a thank you from me. I love this stuff. 

[lesapandre]

Fascinating.

Interesting to see both Ford and Chrysler as domiciled in the UK - before the incorporation of businesses abroad and capital investment  and taxation juggled in a different way. Vauxhall are counted as freestanding and Opel counted separately even though they are both under the corporate GM banner.

At this time BL were still making cars in Belgium and futher afield with their CKD kits - wonder were the profits from that were counted.

Shows what a turkey Chrysler got themselves when the took over Rootes - at least a decade of previous underinvestment weighing on profits.

Just a snapshot - but the position grew much worse for home brands from '73 as import car sales rose steeply.

But it also shows how badly managed BL were to go from some profit to staggering losses in just a few subsequent years .

But everything after Simca were making decent profits and remain today. Some moral in the tale there.

[motorpunk]

238 words written. I can usually rattle off a few thousand words in one sitting, but I’m working a bit harder on content this time. Have also lined up a load of (bloody expensive) photographs to use. Better crack on!

[Dobloseven]

Went down an ARonline rabbit hole the other night.Mention of Red Phyllis(no,not a disease!), holiday home and a cafe.

[AnthonyG]

On 18/02/2025 at 13:40, Dobloseven said:

I know it's a nice bit of alliteration,but surely the Metro actually being produced would have been after his time at Longbridge.

Reminds me of this: 

Anyone notice the issue there? 

So bad it actually put me off buying a copy!

[timolloyd]

Yeah, should be a Passat failing an emissions test.

[AnthonyG]

You’ve probably read enough books, but this one below is worth getting hold of: 

As it was written in 1987, and as Adeney was the industrial editor of the BBC (back when they actually had to know about the subject they reported on rather than retweeting nonsense on X), he knew his stuff, and all the protagonists were still available to interview.

Two things struck me, even when I read it the first time 35 years ago - how backward BMC/BL were in production technology compared to almost any European competitor, there’s a description of the installation of ‘the gate line’ (a form of welding jig) in Cowley in 1970 for the Marina just as Fiat and Renault were removing theirs for something better!

The second thing was how Rootes (and to a lesser extent Vauxhall) were affected by crap oversight from their American parents. In the Rootes case there was too much interference from Chrysler, who didn’t really know what they were doing, and in Vauxhall’s too little oversight from the supposedly much more effective GM management - all the money was made by Bedford trucks - and Vauxhall were sort of left to their own devices for too long. Their only really popular model was the Viva, which led to the mid70s ‘oh fuck’ point when they had to start rebadging Opel designs to survive. From then on, their management was pretty good, Wayne Cherry’s styling skills also helping to make Vauxhalls distinct from Opels at a low cost. 

[motorpunk]

3000 words done. Working backwards. Started in 2017 and now at 1998. The meat of the book will be the 70s. On it.